>From: Nathan Belo <belo@eskimo.com>
>Date: Wed, 2 Oct 1996 18:18:09 -0700 (PDT)
>Subject: Re: Lifter Clicking
>
>On Wed, 2 Oct 1996, Steve Brehm wrote:
>
>> The lifters on my 87 5000cst (124K miles)seem to be getting louder.
>> they always had made some ticking, but seem worse now. The car has
>> plenty of oil- Mobil 1 15W50. Am I in for trouble? What is the best
>> course of action?
>>
>> --Steve Brehm
>>
>>
>I bet it's your vacuum pump that is ticking and not your lifters.
>Very common on the I-5 Audis. My car does it too. You can get a used
>one from AVS for $140 I think 360.748.8578. Everyone that doesn't
>know Audis thought I had lifter problems.
>
>Nathan Belo
>Seattle
>'88 90 Q 145K
>
Actually, it *may* be the lifters. For unknown reasons, some just
make a lot of noise. Synthetic oil *may* help, may not. Changing
the oil may help...Audi has had several TSBs on this, with no real
solution, although I think they had some bad lifters (like thousands
of them) in the late '80s.
You can change the lifters, it is not that hard, but it may not help.
I have 162K on my '88 90Q, and it has sounded like a diesel for
about 60K. I just change the oil when it gets to bad, and they quite
down somewhat ;-) I removed my vacuum pump 4 years ago.
Some have sworn by various oils (Marvel, etc.) but nothing has been
found to be a cure all. And they are hydraulic, so they can not be
adjusted - they are supposed to adjust themselves.
-----------------------------------
Allan D. Morris
Phoenix, AZ
allanm@primenet.com
1988 90Q
-----------------------------------